The Costs of Contradiction: US Border Policy 1986–2000

Authors: Durand J.¹; Massey D.S.²

Source: Latino Studies, Volume 1, Number 2, July 2003 , pp. 233-252(20)

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

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Abstract:

Since 1986 the United States has employed a politics of contradiction in its relations with Mexico. With US encouragement, Mexico joined GATT in that year and embarked on a neoliberal economic project that opened its economy to trade, investment, and exchange, a project that was institutionalized by NAFTA, ratified by the US, and fully enacted in 1994. Over the same period, however, the US has poured increasing resources into maintaining the illusion of a controlled border that is impervious to the flow of Mexican workers, even as it becomes more permeable with respect to capital, information, goods, commodities, and services. In this article, we document the contradictory policy of growing integration and increasing separation and then trace out the costs of this self-deception for the inhabitants of both countries and the people who move between them.Latino Studies (2003) 1, 233–252. doi:10.1057/palgrave.lst.8600022

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.lst.8600022

Affiliations: 1: 1Universidad de Guadalajara, Jalisco 2: 2University of Pennsylvania, PA

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